Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: TimothyEllis on September 29, 2020, 12:23:45 PM
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The latest Amazon insanity just hit my current book.
More items to explore slider.
It comes first on the page, after the series, and contains a whole lot of total sh*t that has no relation to my purchase history, and I;d never in a million years even consider looking for.
Serious WTF moment.
Half of the first 2 screens look like plumbing supplies. :dizzy :shrug The rest of it is stuff I cant even identify, even with the descriptions.
Whose demented insanity is this?
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I took a look. That's really weird. I haven't seen this with other books and I don't get why they're equating it with your's. Might be worth it to contact them.
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This is just a theory, but here it is:
The frequent mention of the word "Bud" and the phrase "capacity of a plant" in your tagline signaled to Amazon that your book is a product related to distilling or beer production. These might also be keywords that homebrewers are using in the search field and which are erroneously bringing them to your book, and if that erroneous connection happened enough times, then perhaps Amazon's bots noticed.
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This is just a theory, but here it is:
The frequent mention of the word "Bud" and the phrase "capacity of a plant" in your tagline signaled to Amazon that your book is a product related to distilling or beer production. These might also be keywords that homebrewers are using in the search field and which are erroneously bringing them to your book, and if that erroneous connection happened enough times, then perhaps Amazon's bots noticed.
:eek: :dizzy :shrug
It's on the whole series, but not on my book 1, so you might be right.
:rant :HB
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On Tim's book page I get silicon plugs, a bottle cleaning set, coolant hose, and a bamboo cutlery set. Following Jeff's logic, does any of your books have a scene where they have to plug a dire leak in the system or the ship will go down? And then they celebrate fixing it with dinner where they mention bamboo cutlery?
One of my books has "Magazine Subscriptions you may like" instead of other products. There is a couple of boating magazines and one camping one, but otherwise they are pretty much spot on. They are probably testing new algos for recommended products for AMS.
I'm going to see what's on 50 shades of gray now.
Edit - FSOG had also viewed. The new book by Stephanie Meyer had "Subscription Services Recommended to You"
You have to go all the way down past the reviews to get to these new carousels. I checked my psych thriller and got deals in Magazines. My WW II book and deals in magazines. Why do they feel customers will want magazines after reading my books? Two of Jeff's books I got also viewed, then on the third one I got the magazine subscriptions. And I got an ad for rapid repair face cream. I'm insulted, and a little worried. I need to put a piece of tape over my camera.
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I'm going to see what's on 50 shades of gray now.
Logically, condoms.
Actually? Probably bibles.
On Tim's book page I get silicon plugs, a bottle cleaning set, coolant hose, and a bamboo cutlery set. Following Jeff's logic, does any of your books have a scene where they have to plug a dire leak in the system or the ship will go down? And then they celebrate fixing it with dinner where they mention bamboo cutlery?
Big no to that.
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I was thinking it would be a little more interesting than condoms but all it had was also viewed, see my comment edit.
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I've been getting the magazine thing all summer on Amazon.
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...does any of your books have a scene where they have to plug a dire leak in the system or the ship will go down? And then they celebrate fixing it with dinner where they mention bamboo cutlery?
You actually just gave me a story idea. :cheers
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This is just a theory, but here it is:
The frequent mention of the word "Bud" and the phrase "capacity of a plant" in your tagline signaled to Amazon that your book is a product related to distilling or beer production. These might also be keywords that homebrewers are using in the search field and which are erroneously bringing them to your book, and if that erroneous connection happened enough times, then perhaps Amazon's bots noticed.
Seems you might be right.
From Amazon's usual totally useless help responder:
Since this feature is updated based on customer shopping habits and changes frequently to reflect current buying patterns, we are unable to remove it.
Which customer though? I don't buy or lookup any of that crap.
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This is just a theory, but here it is:
The frequent mention of the word "Bud" and the phrase "capacity of a plant" in your tagline signaled to Amazon that your book is a product related to distilling or beer production. These might also be keywords that homebrewers are using in the search field and which are erroneously bringing them to your book, and if that erroneous connection happened enough times, then perhaps Amazon's bots noticed.
Seems you might be right.
From Amazon's usual totally useless help responder:
Since this feature is updated based on customer shopping habits and changes frequently to reflect current buying patterns, we are unable to remove it.
Which customer though? I don't buy or lookup any of that crap.
But enough somebodies who looked at or bought your book did look up that carp.
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And now, the sliders are gone.
:smilie_zauber:
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Well they are always changing the pages, but I'd kind of rather they put stuff other than books on the carousels. Books are my competition, I'll take my changes against a variety of silicon plugs and hoses.
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but I'd kind of rather they put stuff other than books on the carousels. Books are my competition,
No, they're not.
When your own books are doing the right thing, the also-bought and viewed sliders should first off have your own books on them.
Other books are what your readers are reading as well, and this is not competition.
If you release every 3 months, that's 90 days without a release, and for a lot of people, that's 30 to 90 books they read between yours. None of them are competition.
Sure, the order people read in might not favour you, but the people who read a lot, and read your books, will read you sometime. It's still not competition for someone else to be read first, as long as you are read.
The whole authors compete thing doesn't hold water. The market is huge, authors release much slower than readers want, and there is plenty of slack in the system for everyone.
The same sliders you see as promoting other people's books are the ones who promote yours to the readers of those other's books. It works both ways.
My current book getting on the first also bought page of say Glynn Stewart's new release, always boosts my book. And my book being boosted, boosts my catalogue. The only thing I wish about Glynn is my slice of his audience was bigger, but I know we share readers. So when people miss my book coming out, they often find it on his. And I've no doubt since Amazon don't send out follower emails anymore, a lot of his fans might be seeing his new book on mine.
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I guess I didn't understand your point. You'd rather just have an extra carousel of books, instead of random stuff, *so* that your book would show up on carousels of those books? Fair enough.
I just went and searched on silicon plugs and now the last carousel is magazines, the second to last is inspired by your browsing history and that one is all books by you, Glenn Stewart and one by Daniel Schinhofen. :)
*corrected phrase
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I guess I didn't understand your point. You'd rather just have an extra carousel of books, instead of random stuff, in the hopes that your book would show up on carousels of those books? Fair enough.
Hopes? No.
If a book is on my also-boughts, mine is on that book's, somewhere. At least every time I've checked.
Also boughts is THE most important advertising there is.
Every time Amazon move it to the bottom of the page, my sales drop. When they move it back up to under the series slider, my sales improve.
What I don't want are the advertising sliders, which are normally full of stuff my readers don't read, and most of which is stuff I'd never read. Odd exceptions, but I dont find books using the advertising sliders, ever.
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I guess I didn't understand your point. You'd rather just have an extra carousel of books, instead of random stuff, in the hopes that your book would show up on carousels of those books? Fair enough.
Hopes? No.
If a book is on my also-boughts, mine is on that book's, somewhere. At least every time I've checked.
Also boughts is THE most important advertising there is.
Every time Amazon move it to the bottom of the page, my sales drop. When they move it back up to under the series slider, my sales improve.
What I don't want are the advertising sliders, which are normally full of stuff my readers don't read, and most of which is stuff I'd never read. Odd exceptions, but I dont find books using the advertising sliders, ever.
Got it. Edited my comment accordingly.
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Slightly off-topic, but I've yet to see an AMS sponsored ad on the aussie kindle store. I've set my address to an Australian one, too.
Mind you, I can't see sponsored ads on the US or UK stores at the moment either - maybe they've noticed I've never clicked an ad in my decade+ on Amazon, and don't bother with me any more? In each case I've set a US/UK address, which usually tricks the system into displaying ads, but nothing.
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I see ads beside your books in US store when I check through my ISP, Simon. I'm in US.
Some of this stuff must just be computer glitches. The one plaguing Tim was a really obnoxious irrelevant one.
I hate that also boughts tend to be on the bottom for many of my books now. Readers have to scroll down under reviews to finally get to them. For my books in the past, it was always at the top. Amazon's doing lots of funky weird stuff with these carousels lately.
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Thanks - I was trying to view ads for my books on other authors' product pages, since I've just expanded my AMS ads considerably (reach, if not responses...) The sponsored product carousel isn't showing on .com, .co.uk or .com.au for me.
Also-boughts and 'Books you might like' both have carousels at the top of the page. There are two small product display ads, and a massive sponsored ad the width of the page between 'about the author' and 'product reviews'
I'm particularly interested in the aussie kindle store, where I can bring up a book I'm targeting and find that not only is my own ad not there, but nor are any others.
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Simon if you want to PM me the authors you want to check I'll do it and let you know what I see.
Don't ask me for screen shots though, it's been a good day so far, I'd like to keep it that way. :)
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Thanks for the offer but no need to trouble yourself - I did manage to find what I was looking for on a couple of pages, so they seem to come and go.
I'm flat out procrastinating at the moment, having just written 2k of Silver. My daily count is steadily increasing, which is what normally happens once I get into a novel.
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I am still waiting for that one. I would preorder it now except, you know, rankings, I'll wait till release day.
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I've been running a BB ad for a permafree, plus half a dozen AMS campaigns for the same book, so Amazon.co.uk just reverted it to paid.
Sometimes this business can be so ... whack-a-mole.
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This'll teach me for describing the Hal Spacejock series as 'science fiction with nuts'
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Oh I laughed out loud at that one. Also impressed that the Algos figured you need screws for the nuts. I'll venmo you $5 US if you add "Screws not included" to the blurb.
Edit - how long is it going to take for silicon plugs to drop out of my browsing history? One year? Two? Ten?
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This'll teach me for describing the Hal Spacejock series as 'science fiction with nuts'
:icon_rofl: :icon_lol2: